Largest Asteroid May Be 'Mini Planet' with Water Ice

7th Sep 2005, 21:19 GMT

NASA -- Observations of 1 Ceres, the largest known asteroid, have revealed that the object may be a "mini planet," and may contain large amounts of pure water ice beneath its surface.The observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope also show that Ceres shares characteristics of the rocky, terrestrial planets like Earth.